June is National Dairy Month

June 3, 2011

MARTINSBURG - Since June is Dairy month I thought I would share what I learned growing up on a dairy farm.

Growing up on a dairy farm I know the efforts it takes to care for a dairy herd and the work that goes into it.

In the springtime the cows would eat garlic and the milk would smell like it. We would beg our mother to buy us milk when that happened. We drank raw milk right out of the milk tank and made homemade ice cream.

Dairy farming is a 365-day-a-year job with milkings at least twice a day, if not three times. There are six breeds of milk cows in the U.S. They are Holstein, Aryshire, Brown Swiss, Guernsey, Jersey and Milking Shorthorn. A Holstein calf weighs about 100 pounds at birth and will reach weights of 1,400 pounds or more as a cow.

Cattle are ruminants, meaning that they have four stomach compartments and they chew their cud. The four parts of a cow's stomach are the rumen (or paunch), the reticulum, omasum and abomasum (or true stomach, which is similar to the human stomach).

When a ruminant eats, it chews food only enough to moisten it for swallowing. After being swallowed, the food goes into the rumen to be softened by digestive juices. After the animal has eaten its fill, it finds a quiet place to chew its cud. It burps up a mass of food along with some liquid, swallows the liquid part, and then chews the mass thoroughly before swallowing it and burping up some more. The rechewed food goes into the omasum, where the liquid is squeezed out, and then goes on into the abomasum. Ruminants developed this way of eating so that they could cram in a lot of feed while grazing in open meadows and then retreat to a safe, secluded place to chew more fully.

The average cow produces enough milk each day to fill 6.3 gallon jugs, 55 pounds of milk. The average cow drinks from 30 to 50 gallons of water each day - about a bathtub's worth. Cows have an acute sense of smell, and can smell something up to 6 miles away. Sources: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service; International Dairy Foods Association, USDA.